News

If you haven’t got your head close to the ground when it comes to gaming news you might not know that RPG developers Obsidian, famous for Fallout New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Knights of the Old Republic 2, have been raising funds via Kickstarter for a completely new IP they’ve dubbed Project Eternity.

Project Eternity is an isometric, party-based RPG much akin to some of the best RPGs ever made such as Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment. If you liked those games, or you liked Dragon Age, it’s safe to say you’re going to really like Project Eternity.

The great news is they’ve already smashed the hell out of the total they were looking for at $1.1m and are currently sat at $2.3m with 10 days left to go for the fundraising. However, this doesn’t mean your money isn’t necessary and can’t be put to good use, and their latest project update has given you an even bigger reason to back Obsidian with your hard-earned cash.

QUOTE

From Neverwinter Nights 2 to Fallout: New Vegas, we've enjoyed supporting the mod community, and we are continuing that with Project Eternity. It is awesome to see how you extend the worlds we make.

To make getting mods easy, we are excited to announce that our friends at the Nexus will be the official spot to download Project Eternity mods once the game is released. They have been a great host for mods for our past games, and we want to continue the trend with the Project Eternity Nexus. Check out the Nexus Network at www.nexusmods.com.

Our plan is to release our file-format information and expose as much of the data in the game as possible for you to extend and edit. We traditionally do not "hard-code" numbers so that our designers, and you, have the power to easily change and iterate on RPG data. We also plan on releasing localization tools to let communities around the world create localized versions for languages we are not translating Project Eternity into.

As we get more familiar with Unity during production, we will be extending Project Eternity even more for mod makers. Look forward to announcements in the months ahead as we make further progress and can provide you with more information about tools and mod support.

I’m proud and honoured to be asked to support the modding community by Obsidian themselves, and will happily commit to the creation of a Project Eternity Nexus.

Kickstarter has created a small revolution in the gaming industry recently by enabling talented individuals and studios to fund some great projects without the hassle of needing backing from over-bearing and demanding game publishers. How many triple A titles have come out recently without mod support that would and could have been better with modding tools? (The answer is all of them). While the ins-and-outs of why developers don’t pay more attention to modding are quite complex, I think it’s pretty safe to say that a major reason is that publishers just don’t want developers commiting to them. Too much time and too much effort for no tangible figures that can be put on to an accountant’s spreadsheet. You and I know the worth of the modding community, but try explaining it to the man with the money. That’s why it’s important that when these projects come around (and more and more are cropping up) that you try to support them however you can.

Obsidian have come out extremely early in their development process in support of the modding community. They’ve committed to making their game as open as possible for modders and really want to release an SDK for the game as well, so long as they can wrap their head around the Unity engine (which I don’t doubt they will!). And I think that’s great.

Frankly, I see Kickstarter as a pre-order service for my games and right now you can pre-order Project Eternity for the gob-smackingly low price of just $25. I assume it’s going to retail for a lot more than that, so if you’ve got the funds then consider helping Obsidian out and pre-ordering now. And heck, they’ve got price points all the way up to $10,000 with a myriad of different perks for backers, so check it out.